Augustine of Hippo: Humans, Society, Reality, and Knowledge
Humans
The human soul shares a source of life and vital energy with all living beings. What differentiates the soul is that, besides being the beginning of life and a rational and spiritual principle, its ultimate goal is to know God. Augustine of Hippo struggled to explain how the human soul enters a body. His initial idea was that the soul, as a seminal reason, was transmitted through the father’s semen to the children, a doctrine known as “Traducianism.” To explain the idea of original sin and avoid the implication that the soul’s punishment was a creation of the parents (which would be heresy), Augustine opted for creationism, the idea that all souls were created by God.
This doctrine avoids the previous problem but doesn’t explain how original sin is passed from parents to children. Claiming that original sin itself was a divine creation would be another heresy.
Regarding the relationship between soul and body, Augustine, following Plato, held a dualistic view, believing that the soul and body are two different subsystems. Neither the soul nor the body alone constitutes the human composite; they must be joined together.
Society
Augustine of Hippo’s political thought stems from the idea that the earthly city is merely a copy of the heavenly city. From the concept of the “two cities” arise two important consequences:
- The Church should guide the state. The state must meet the needs of all its members.
- The only truly perfect society is the Church, and in this sense, it is and should be superior to the state. The state and civil society should be subject to the Church since its principles were inspired by it. These principles are a copy of the principles that govern the heavenly state; any insurrection against the Church is also against those principles.
Although Augustine places the Church above the state, his political theory ultimately provides a justification for the state’s existence. The state cannot embody true justice unless it is a Christian state: Christianity makes people good citizens. The state itself, as the monopoly of power and strength, has its roots in original sin, according to St. Augustine. Given the fact of original sin and its consequences, the state is a necessary institution, but it cannot be righteous unless it is Christian.
Reality
To create the world, God uses the ideas in His understanding. God’s ideas do not change; they are eternal and present in the divine mind. God used these ideas as models, i.e., exemplary ideas. This doctrine, known as “exemplarism,” states that God is present in the model of creation in its entirety. All beings are thus a reflection of the ideas contained in the divine understanding. If all creation is eternally contained in God, all creatures must have arisen simultaneously. St. Augustine introduces the ideas in the mind of God as seminal reasons, i.e., the ideas of all creatures are seeds that implicitly contain the time when creation must occur.
Knowledge
Understanding can lead to God through knowledge. St. Augustine legitimizes the world of the senses, but this knowledge is insufficient to reach the truth. There are two different types of intellectual knowledge capable of bringing happiness to human beings: a lower reason, which identifies with science and is the kind of reason people normally use in their lives, and a higher reason, “wisdom,” through which human beings can know eternal truths, with God as their ultimate goal.
To reach the knowledge of those eternal truths, God must illuminate human reason, because human reason is finite and contingent and cannot achieve this on its own. When this enlightened understanding comes from God, we attain wisdom.
This enlightened understanding from God, which is wisdom, involves the following: God is the source of truth; enlightened understanding can know God. Secondly, this enlightenment occurs naturally, i.e., human nature is inscribed with the fact that God has enlightened understanding to know the truth, because this understanding has been created by God. The desire to attain wisdom is within the human soul and was created by God along with the soul, making it essential.